https://cordcuttersnews.com/california-wants-to-stop-att-from-shutting-down-traditional-phone-lines/
California Wants to Stop AT&T From Shutting Down Traditional Phone Lines
By
Luke Bouma
on
June 19, 2026
in
All News, News
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California regulators have formally accused AT&T of providing false information to the Federal Communications Commission in an effort to discontinue service on its aging copper-based wireline telephone network, according to Arstechnica. The filing, submitted by the California Public Utilities Commission on June 15, 2026, challenges AT&T’s petitions to preempt state rules and end landline obligations affecting roughly 199,000 customers. This comes as AT&T and others have been shutting down DSL and traditional phone lines that run on copper in many states.
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Sad to say but as a fat old white guy retired injineer, copper-based wireline telephone network, sometimes called POTS (plain old telephone service) is and was very reliable and cheap. Power outages, tornados, and human stupidity aside, you picked up the phone and got “dial tone”.
Don’t forget the AT&T tradition of the operator dying at the switchboard to alert everyone of danger.
And, the old AT&T Motto, “no service is so urgent, that we can’t take the time to do our job safely”. Never mind the wags that amended it to “take time for coffee”.
It was a “widows and orphans” stock, until in their infinite wisdom Judge Green and the FCC (a captive of the mobile telephone industry) decided that AT&T and the Baby Bells should be “aborted”. One casualty was the greatest national resource “Bell Labs”. Another was the millions of retirees who had — whether they knew it or not — dedicated their lives to providing the BEST national telephone service.
Shame on the US Gooferment for allowing this to fail.
Argh!
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Posted by reinkefj 
Reinke Faces Life 